Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni. For Ugandans, the past year was
tumultuous, and the effects are likely to linger or even escalate in
2017 across the political, economic and social spheres. PHOTO | FILE
By CHARLES MWANGUHYA
In Summary
For Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the end of the year
came with closure to one of the most mixed 12 months of his more than
three-decade rule.
Now going into 2017, a critical audit of the past year of
President Museveni’s reign could shape the narrative on whether he
achieves his much acclaimed kisanja hakuna mchezo (no nonsense term), or if the status quo will prevail.
Senior presidential press secretary Don Wanyama described 2016
as a year of “rejuvenation where the president won a new mandate built
on the fact that the country has been registering steady progress in the
economic, social and political spheres.”
Mr Wanyama said in order to keep a steady pace in 2017,
President Museveni would continue with his approach of holding
discussions with individual sectors on what needs to be done to drive
the country to the goal of attaining lower middle income status by 2020.
The past year was tumultuous, and the effects are likely to
linger or even escalate in 2017 across the political, economic and
social spheres.
Political front
The political battle lines, observers and critics in Kampala
note, are likely to keep President Museveni and his nemesis of the past
20 years, Kizza Besigye, as the dominant players.
Although President Museveni defeated Dr Besigye and five other
contestants in the February 18, 2016 elections, the poll was termed as
the most controversial and discredited in Uganda to date. Since taking
the oath of office for a fifth straight term on May 12, President
Museveni and his ruling party have spent the past seven months asserting
their victory in a laboured fashion.
The election was conducted under protest from the opposition
over the failure to carry out electoral reforms, a process the Museveni
government remains reluctant to push through.
To observers, President Museveni has already launched his
campaign for 2021 through his Operation Wealth Creation tours that
started in late 2016.
As if reading from the same script, the opposition Forum for
Democratic Change (FDC) of Dr Besigye also announced it would move
across the country to reactivate its structures, and to assert itself as
the alternative to solve problems faced by Ugandans.
A case in point was in November; as the government dithered over
how to respond to the famine in 44 districts in the country, Dr Besigye
and FDC delivered two tonnes of emergency food aid to starving people
in Isingiro district, the epicentre of the food crisis triggered by a
long drought.
“Uganda, which gets enough rainfall, should not be facing a food
crisis. Water should have been harvested for irrigation,” Dr Besigye
told residents of Isingiro, adding that instead of using modern methods
of harvesting water for irrigation, President Museveni and his
government were out of touch with the present and still applying Stone
Age methods to fight drought.
Dr Besigye will probably use such opportunities in 2017 to further discredit the Museveni regime.
Devastating drought
President Museveni and the NRM pledged that his fifth term would
focus on the fight against poverty and corruption, but events in 2016
suggest a tough and rugged road ahead. When drought devastated the
economy and drove some 1.3 million people to starvation, a government
intervention to supply relief food, led by Prime Minister Ruhakana
Rugunda, was too little too late.
The crisis helped to highlight a major challenge that despite
all the talk of agricultural transformation and billions of shillings
being poured into poorly managed schemes to transform agriculture — the
country’s mainstay employing some 68 per cent of the population —
remains at the mercy of nature.
The president attracted much public mockery, especially on
social media, after his media team circulated pictures of his tour to
Luwero district — celebrated by the NRM as the home of the revolution
that brought him to power in 1986 — showing him pushing a yellow
jerrican on a bicycle to demonstrate simple irrigation techniques.
Images of starving families in Isingiro, once the country’s biggest producer of the critical staple matooke, served to ridicule a government clueless on how to promote and modernise agriculture.
Morrison Rwakakamba, who heads a new outfit tasked with
collecting data on government successes and failures to push a
fact-based fight against critics, lists the famine as a major drawback
of 2016.
Indeed, if such incidents present themselves in 2017 and the FDC
capitalises on the government’s failure to respond, they could shape
how the next presidential battle plays out.
Changing the Constitution
A critical constitutional matter directly impacts President
Museveni’s future after 2021: According to the current Constitution, the
incumbent will be ineligible to contest again.
However, a surprise Bill and petitions from other movement
chairpersons and party leaders from the district of Kyankwanzi shortly
after President Museveni took his oath, pushing for an amendment of the
Constitution to remove Article 102 (b) on age limits, has left little
doubt that he wants to stay on.
Observers say 2017 will be the year when any moves on the
Constitution and particularly President Museveni’s desire to hang on
beyond 2021 will become clear.
Land dispute
Economists warn that effects of the long drought are likely to linger into 2017.
A contest between various government agencies over the expansion
of agricultural lands by destroying fragile ecosystems, specifically
for multinationals wanting to grow sugarcane in Bugoma forest reserve in
Masindi district and Zoka forest in West Nile, only added to the bag of
contradictions that the government faces in its kisanja hakuna mchezo.
Makerere University reopened on Tuesday after two months of
closure following a strike by lecturers over unpaid allowances. The
strike was a major slap in the face of First Lady Janet Museveni, who
was appointed to head the Ministry of Education in June. It took the intervention of President Museveni to order the institution closed after negotiations involving the minister and the lecturers failed
Former Member of Parliament John Lukyamunzi termed the closure
of Makerere University as evidence of “incompetent management of the
education sector” and the entire country generally, a failure by
President Museveni who chose his wife to manage a critical sector. Mr
Lukyamuzi was speaking to journalists at an event organised by the
African Centre for Media Excellence in December.
Mass killing
But the highlight of the year, critics and supporters agree, was
the mass killing of royal guards of the cultural leader of Rwenzururu,
Charles Wesley Mumbere, by a combined force of police and the military
on November 27. It was a low moment for President Museveni, an indelible
blemish on his career.
Don Wanyama calls it an “unfortunate incident.” Mr Rwakakamba
lists the “confrontation between the Obusinga Bwa Rwenzururu and law
enforcement leading to the death of over 60 civilians and 14 security
personnel,” top of a list of eight “downsides and drawbacks of 2016.”
The attack, happening exactly 50 years after a similar raid by
the government of president Milton Obote on the Buganda Kingdom in 1966,
drew parallels between President Museveni and his predecessors, whom he
has derided on several occasions.
At 72 and still wishing to hang on to power, President Museveni
would have hoped to quit at a less chaotic time and focus on legacy
projects, but reality has conspired differently.
No comments:
Post a Comment